From the moment I saw it last year, I was completely bewildered. I spent a good 10 minutes thinking of possible ways to take such a photo, but could only come up with someone hanging a giant boom out in front of the field (which would be dangerous) or someone running out with a camera quickly (which is also reasonably dangerous :P)! Anyway, I remembered it just then and thought “who better to ask than the people of F1 Fanatic?”

By the way, the photo is taken on the pit-straight in China. (Though, I didn’t need to tell you that, because you’re F1 Fanatics, aren’t you?)

It doesn’t look to be zoomed though… You can (for some reason, and I have no idea why) tell when a photo has been taken with a zoom or not, and this looks to have been taken from just in front of the car!

I think you have it! It could be when the cars were lining up on the grid. That would explain why there’s a Lotus leading a Ferrari and a Mercedes. Then again, they may have been lapping him…

I know it’s definitely not zoomed, because the Ferrari wouldn’t appear so much smaller and the track would appear to have a more constant width. And there is no way he could have been so selective with the focus as to have the other cars out of focus and the Lotus focused from such a distance.

It has to be zoomed- what other explanation could there be?! The quality isn’t great either which happens with long distance zoomed up photo’s. Presumably, like ajokay says, it’s been taken from the bridge above the circuit. It is a great photo though

It can’t be zoomed. Take this picture for example. Notice how the Red Bulls are approximately the same size? That’s because the of the zoom. You can also see how the straight seems to be at a constant width all the way down, whereas in the picture I posted originally, it falls away quickly, almost suggesting the photographer was there. And I don’t think it’s high enough to have been taken from the giant structure over the track.

I am not sure whether we’re going to find a definitive answer, so here’s a new challenge! What on Earth is Kamui Kobayashi doing in this picture?!